The Dragon Reborn - By Robert Jordan Page 0,306

not yet ready for, or else die. Die, knowing you have left these women you care for in my hands.” He seemed to be waiting for something, expectant. “I mean to use them more, Kinslayer. They will serve me, serve my power. And that will hurt them far more than anything they have suffered before.”

Behind Rand, Callandor flashed, throwing one pulse of warmth against his back. “Who are you?”

“You do not remember me, do you?” The white-haired man laughed suddenly. “I do not remember you, either, looking this way. A country lad with a flute case on his back. Did Ishamael speak the truth? He was ever one to lie when it gained him an inch or a second. Do you remember nothing, Lews Therin?”

“A name!” Rand demanded. “What is your name?”

“Call me Be’lal.” The Forsaken scowled when Rand did not react to the name. “Take it!” Be’lal snapped, throwing a hand toward the sword behind Rand. “Once we rode to war side by side, and for that I give you a chance. A bare chance, but a chance to save yourself, a chance to save those three I mean to make my pets. Take the sword, countryman. Perhaps it will be enough to help you survive me.”

Rand laughed. “Do you believe you can frighten me so easily, Forsaken? Ba’alzamon himself has hunted me. Do you think I will cower now for you? Grovel before a Forsaken when I have denied the Dark One to his face?”

“Is that what you think?” Be’lal said softly. “Truly, you know nothing.” Suddenly there was a sword in his hands, a sword with a blade carved from black fire. “Take it! Take Callandor! Three thousand years, while I lay imprisoned, it has waited there. For you. One of the most powerful sa’angreal we ever made. Take it, and defend yourself, if you can!”

He moved toward Rand as if to drive him back toward Callandor, but Rand raised his own hands—saidin filled him; sweet rushing flow of the Power; stomach-wrenching vileness of the taint—and he held a sword wrought from red flame, a sword with a heron-mark on its fiery blade. He stepped into the forms Lan had taught him till he flowed from one to the next as if in a dance. Parting the Silk. Water Flows Downhill. Wind and Rain. Blade of black fire met blade of red in showers of sparks, roars like white-hot metal shattering.

Rand came back smoothly into a guard stance, trying not to let his sudden uncertainty show. A heron stood on the black blade, too, a bird so dark as to be nearly invisible. Once he had faced a man with a heron-mark blade of steel, and barely survived. He knew that he himself had no real right to the blademaster’s mark; it had been on the sword his father had given him, and when he thought of a sword in his hands, he thought of that sword. Once he had embraced death, as the Warder had taught, but this time, he knew, his death would be final. Be’lal was better than he with the sword. Stronger. Faster. A true blademaster.

The Forsaken laughed, amused, swinging his blade in quick flourishes to either side of him; the black fire roared as if swift passage through the air quickened it. “You were a greater swordsman, once, Lews Therin,” he said mockingly. “Do you remember when we took that tame sport called swords and learned to kill with it, as the old volumes said men once had? Do you remember even one of those desperate battles, even one of our dire defeats? Of course not. You remember nothing, do you? This time you have not learned enough. This time, Lews Therin, I will kill you.” Be’lal’s mockery deepened. “Perhaps if you take Callandor, you might extend your life a little longer. A little longer.”

He came forward slowly, almost as if to give Rand time to do just that, turn and race to Callandor, to the Sword That Cannot Be Touched, to take it. But the doubts were still strong in Rand. Callandor could only be touched by the Dragon Reborn. He had allowed them to proclaim him so for a hundred reasons that seemed to leave him no choice at the time. But was he truly the Dragon Reborn? If he raced to touch Callandor in truth, not in a dream, would his hand meet an invisible wall while Be’lal cut him down from behind?

He met the Forsaken with the sword